


Up in Flames

by glacis



Category: Port Charles
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-01-29
Updated: 2010-01-29
Packaged: 2017-10-06 19:24:18
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,598
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/56980
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/glacis/pseuds/glacis
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Kevin's world explodes. Mac fights fire with fire.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Up in Flames

Up in Flames, a Port Charles vignette by Sue Castle.

"**_EVE_**!"

Kevin's scream shook Mac to the core. If he'd been able to do something, _anything_, to save his best friend from the anguish of discovering his wife had been blown to smithereens in a car bomb, he'd've done it, but he couldn't. The ring recovered from the finger of the charred corpse trapped in the scorched remains of Ian's car had definitely been Eve's wedding ring.

Lucy stood beside Kevin, hands fluttering uselessly, eyes and mouth wide open in sympathetic anguish, fellow feeling she never had for anyone but her Doc. Mac could relate. He and Kevin had started out as enemies, fought over Felicia, mutated through time and trial into best friends, and even closer during the worst times. The debacle of Luke Spencer's trial, when Felicia's testimony of her affair with the bastard had cleared Spencer of Stefan Cassadine's death, had sounded the death knell for their marriage. Kevin had helped him come to grips with that, helped him focus on what was important, his daughters. He, in turn, had helped Kevin as best he could to come to grips with his own unexpected fatherhood, dealing with Livvie and the legacy of Grace's insanity and death. But at least Kevin had been able to lean on Eve, trust in her love, believe in a happy ending.

That happy ending had just gone up in flames.

Kevin's heart beat like a trip-hammer beneath Mac's palm where he held the grief-stricken man back from the fiery car. The heat from the flames was nothing to the heat rising from Kevin's body. Kevin's face was white in the shadows cast by the fires still burning from the results of the car bomb, smeared with soot, dark brown eyes staring wildly, glazed with tears. Mac could feel the slender body beneath his hand shaking, and knew how fragile the thread was that held Kevin's emotions in check. He couldn't last long like this, and Mac knew it.

"Doc? Doc, please, oh, please."

Lucy was whimpering helplessly, patting Kevin ineffectually on the arm and shoulder. Kevin didn't appear to even know she was there, eyes staring blindly at the wreckage containing his wife's burnt corpse. Mac swallowed hard.

"I'll take care of him, Lucy," he said firmly, pitching the words as a command in order to pry her attention away from her Doc. "You see to Livvie, okay?"

"I won't leave him!" Lucy proclaimed, the thread of incipient hysteria in her voice the only sign that she wasn't quite as forceful as she'd like to be -- nor as in control of herself. Kevin glanced sideways at her, then down at the hand Mac still had clamped against the center of his chest.

"It's okay," Mac repeated. Kevin looked at him, and Mac knew that it wasn't him Kevin was seeing. "Livvie needs you --"

"Doc needs me!" she broke in. Mac continued inexorably.

"I'll take care of Kevin. You go take care of his daughter, so he doesn't have to worry about her." With that order also disguised as a request, Mac raised his other hand and brought it up to sling his arm around Kevin's shoulders. "I've got Kevin."

Glancing over at Taggart, he signaled for his detective to take over the on-site investigation, and patted his breast pocket to indicate he was to be called on his cell phone if the FBI needed him. Taggart nodded understanding, and Mac gently disengaged Kevin from Lucy's clinging hands.

"C'mon, mate, I'm taking you home with me."

He looked over at Lucy, and saw gratitude and understanding in her eyes. She knew, and he knew she knew, that Kevin needed something she couldn't give him this night. She couldn't, but Mac could.

Once in awhile, the divine Ms. Coe could be astonishingly discreet.

Manhandling Kevin into his car took every ounce of persistence and upper body strength Mac could muster. For a slender man, Kevin could be a hell of a deadweight. Mac had noticed this before, but in more pleasant circumstances. Emotional shock had a rotten tendency to turn a bloke into a walking zombie.

Once at his apartment, Mac led his silent, shaking friend into the bathroom. Kevin didn't say anything as Mac efficiently and gently washed the soot and grime from his face and hands. He didn't blink. He barely breathed. By the time Mac got to work undressing him, he was becoming seriously concerned.

"Kevin," he coaxed softly, "talk to me, man. Anything you need to say, anything, just so I know you're in there." Feeling vaguely ridiculous but too concerned about Kevin to care, he went on almost under his breath, feeling a kinship with Lucy and her habit of babbling that he'd never had before. Kevin, silenced, was spooky. "Please, mate. Say something. You're the shrink, here. Don't you think it'd be better to let it out?"

A cold hand covered his as he reached for the buckle of Kevin's belt.

"Mac," Kevin whispered. Mac looked up into the most tortured eyes he'd ever seen. The lost expression, in eyes that were usually so full of warmth and sparkle, wrenched at his heart.

"Ah, damnit, Kev," he murmured back, hands slipping around Kevin's waist as his friend leaned forward and rested his head against Mac's shoulder. "I'm so sorry," Mac whispered against the cool skin of Kevin's neck.

"Shouldn't've happened, not like that, not with him. God, Mac," Kevin's voice was strained as the tears he'd held back fought to clog his throat. "He was s'posed to've left! He should have died alone. He was always leading her into danger. And now he's killed her!"

Mac didn't waste breath pointing out that Ian was as dead as Eve, as much a victim as she of the bastard who'd planted a bomb under his car. He simply listened as the broken litany continued, stripping Kevin down to his shorts, gently washing away the sweat and cinders from the night's tragedy. By the time he'd gotten the man clean and steered him to the bed, the words were dying away to formless mutters, sounds of pain and bewilderment that turned the pang in Mac's heart to a dull, nagging ache. Kevin'd been through too much tragedy already in his life. He deserved better than this.

Pulling the duvet down, he settled Kevin against the linens and lifted the long legs up under the covers. He started to smooth the downy material over the spare frame when Kevin's hands came up to cover his. For the first time since Mac had arrived at the crime scene, the deep eyes were focused on him and actually seemed to recognize him.

"No," Kevin said quietly. Mac cocked his head at him.

"No what?" he asked just as quietly.

"Don't leave."

Mac swallowed. "You sure, mate?"

"Please." The only color in Kevin's face was a hint of blood at his lips. His eyes were pools of darkness that seemed to gather all the light in the room and swallow it up. They threatened to swallow Mac along with it.

He let himself be caught.

Climbing in beside Kevin, Mac gathered his friend close to him and held him firmly, rocking gently. Kevin turned his face into the side of Mac's neck and wrapped his arms around Mac's back, holding on tightly. Mac stared up at the ceiling, watching the shadows their bodies made against the moonlight reflected through the window, and bit his lip to keep back words as the first few tears trickled over his collar bone. Sleep was a very long time coming for Kevin.

Mac didn't bother trying.

A little before two in the morning, his cell phone rang, and he gingerly unwrapped himself from Kevin to go answer it. The exhausted man in his bed barely stirred. Taking the phone into the living room, he flipped it open.

"Scorpio."

"Taggart, sir. Update on the car bomb."

"Did Hannah come out?"

"Yes, the FBI's on the scene too." There was a dash of humor in Taggart's voice when he mentioned the agent, his girlfriend, but it disappeared as he continued his report. "The remains have been taken to forensics to confirm identities, but on-scene evidence strongly suggests the bodies are of Ian Thornheart and Eve Collins. Is Doctor Collins all right?"

"As well as can be expected," Mac answered, staring back into the darkened doorway of his bedroom. "Any clues as to who set the bomb?"

"Not yet, sir, but we're running background checks now to see who could have targeted Doctor Thornheart. He was involved with some undercover work back in the UK, and there's always the possibility of either a Mob hit or some sort of payback from the recent murders at GH. Heck, it could even be the IRA, for all we know yet."

"Keep me informed," Mac ordered, then cut the connection. Nothing. Too early, of course, for anything definite, but it would have been nice to catch a break from the scene. This investigation was going to be ugly and painful. Better if it wasn't slow, too.

"Mac?"

Kevin's low voice coming from the bedroom jolted him out of his thoughts. Walking back to stand braced against the doorjamb, he stared at the bed. Kevin lay on his side, head propped on one hand, hair falling over his fingers, staring back at him. Mac took a deep breath. Before he could say a word, Kevin beat him to the punch.

"It was Eve, wasn't it." His intonation made it clear it wasn't a question. Mac nodded.

"I'm sorry." Every bit of pain he felt for Kevin was clear in the two inadequate words.

Kevin reached out to him, and Mac stepped forward, lacing his fingers with Kevin's and allowing himself to be pulled onto the bed. He ended up face to face with Kevin, leaning over him.

"Make the voices in my head stop, Mac," Kevin asked him. Much as his own interaction with Lucy earlier, it was more command than request, and Mac found himself responding as helplessly as Lucy had to his own orders.

"I'm not sure this is a good idea," he admitted, his breath ghosting over Kevin's lips. The kiss that met his words stopped his breath in his lungs.

"You're alone," Kevin reminded him when their mouths parted. Mac ignored the stab of pain at the reminder that Felicia was no longer his to listen to the next agonized phrases. "So am I. Tonight I lost my future in a bomb blast. I don't have a tomorrow. Let me have tonight. Let me forget."

Kevin kissed him again, and Mac accepted it and returned it with fervor. They'd gone through this before, the first time he'd broken up with Felicia, when Kevin had separated from Lucy. This time they were both hurting. He needed the comfort, and God knew Kevin did.

"That I can do," he muttered against Kevin's ear, then set about making sure they both forgot everything but the here and now. Friendship, the closest tie he had with anyone, leavened with desire, laced with passion. Secrets of the night that had gotten them through pain in the past could now be relied upon to see them through the worst pain imaginable.

He didn't bother speaking after that, putting his mouth to better use against Kevin's body. Adrenaline fought with exhaustion, the latter making them both hard to rouse but once there, the rush from the night's events kept them hard. Mac relearned Kevin's body from temple to ankle, pausing to lay kisses along his jaw line, down his breastbone, along the line of his ribs, his waist, his hip, nudging between his thighs to linger on the soft skin and sweet musk there. Mac's hands alternately soothed and excited, stroking the long lines of Kevin's legs, palming a bony kneecap, curving around a pointed ankle bone, around to the length of calf, the dip behind the knee, the soft spare flesh of buttocks.

By the time he allowed himself to take Kevin's erection in his mouth, Mac knew from the broken moans and garbled words pouring out over his head that Kevin was completely caught up in their lovemaking. Sex could be so many things. Affirmation of life. An anchor in troubled times. A celebration. A wake.

Fire with which to fight fire.

When Kevin came in his mouth, Mac milked him through his climax, gentling him with calming caresses along his hips, cradling his sac in one palm, pressing and stroking between his thighs to heighten the sensation. As hard as he was, and as needful, he would have contented himself with bringing himself off and letting Kevin get some rest.

Kevin disagreed.

Strong fingers clenched over his fist as he pulled at his cock, and he looked up to see Kevin's half-closed eyes staring at him intently. Then Kevin spread his legs and locked his ankles at the small of Mac's back. The invitation was certainly clear enough not to need words, but Mac used them anyway.

"You sure, mate?" They didn't fuck often. Hell, they didn't bed one another often. Only when the need overwhelmed them. Like tonight. "I could --"

"I'm not going to ask you twice," Kevin informed him, a hint of a growl and the shadow of his usual humor underlying his voice. Mac grinned briefly.

"Right," he agreed, then fumbled for a condom. He hadn't had much use for them since his wife ran off with Luke Spencer, but they were there. As was the lube. A damned good thing, too, because he wouldn't have been able to wait much longer. It was a good thing Kevin was relaxed from his orgasm, as well, because Mac found himself losing hold of what precious little control he had left as he pushed forward.

Nothing, but _nothing_, felt like this. Kevin's arms wrapped around his shoulders, pulling him closer, and Kevin's legs curled around him, shoving him in deeper. Kevin's voice rose like smoke trailing through him, the words making sense somewhere outside himself where thought still existed. Harder, and yes, and need this, and now, and god, please, tumbled around them, and Mac wasn't sure if he said the words or Kevin did. It didn't matter. Nothing mattered but the feel of Kevin under him, around him, holding on to him, burning him up.

Then he was coming, and he was shouting, and he was holding back as tightly as he was being held. There was no Felicia, no Luke, no Eve, no Ian, no divorce, no death -- nothing in the world but Kevin and heat and need and satiation. Kevin bucked under him and he felt a spurt of fluid against his stomach corresponding with a clenching around his spasming cock that sent his head into another spin. He wondered vaguely when Kevin had gotten hard again, then realized it didn't matter, because neither one of them would be doing anything more that night but sleeping. The good thing about sex was that it drained a man's brain of all the mess and chaos of a hellish day. The other good thing was that it wiped him out.

Kevin's eyes closed before his own, and the steady sounds of his breathing lulled Mac to sleep. With daylight would come accountability, responsibility, and proof of heartbreak. Until then, Kevin was his, and Mac had done everything in his power to ensure that the flames of passion burned brighter than the flames of loss. He only prayed it would be enough.

_end_


End file.
